


The Joining of Unlike Things

by violent_ends



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Romance, Sexual Content, Smut, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:09:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23127898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: “Vignette,” Philo whispers, her little explorer on the surface of the moon, marveling at his discovery as if he hasn’t already landed, already walked, already touched. He has done all these things, and more: he has taken, he has given, he has broken, he has fixed. He has left, he has returned.And in the end, he has stayed.
Relationships: Rycroft Philostrate/Vignette Stonemoss
Comments: 11
Kudos: 89





	The Joining of Unlike Things

Lines of barbed wire crisscross over the Row, a monstrous, unnatural forest of thorns outside the window. This room of the Tetterby Hotel is now theirs, and it’s damp, and smells foul, but it’s _theirs_. He is with her, now – _chose_ to be with her, chose _them_, chose who and what he is. To her, he never was anything less.

To her, he has always been whole.

Vignette skims her fingers over the planes of Philo's back, over scars that should be wings instead. They are not, but they don’t need to be. In her dreams, he flies.

The sound of a gunshot somewhere outside startles them both: her fingers dig into his skin, his arm tightens around her middle where he’s holding her. They don’t need to voice what they know just happened: another fae shot out of the sky. Another pair of wings lost and torn apart.

“Don’t ever try that,” Philo tells her, lifting his head from where it was resting on her naked shoulder. If he was anyone else, Vignette would glare at him for telling her what she should and should not do, but she knows he’s right.

Besides, “And leave you here, if I were to succeed? No, I wouldn’t do that.”

She says it thinking he'll find it sweet, endearing; instead, his face darkens.

“I'm a dead weight, to you,” he seems to realize with a bitter smile. “Quite literally.”

Oh, how does he still not see?

“You’re not _that_ heavy – I could carry you!” Vignette jokes, and he laughs – it’s a bit hollow, maybe, but he does. She laughs with him, cards her fingers through his hair, watches his expression change again. His arm moves up her back until he finds the beginning of a wing and starts stroking it downward, following the bulged maze of its translucent veining with reverence, with longing.

“She said… she said I wouldn’t have been able to fly anyway,” he whispers quietly, looking at what seems to be a particularly interesting spot between her neck and shoulder as he lies in her embrace. Vignette frowns.

“Who?”

“Afissa.” He still won’t look at her.

“That was rude.” And what would _she_ know. “I’m sure she wasn’t thinking.”

“She didn’t know she was talking about me, yet.”

“Oh.”

She watches him closely as his hand keeps moving – up and down, back and forth, right to left, left to right.

“She said they were too small, and weak, and-”

“Stop.”

His mouth falls shut, but his hand stops abruptly, too. He keeps it where it is, but light, almost hovering in the air, not sure if he’s allowed. Still not sure, after everything.

Vignette cups his cheek and finally forces him to meet her eyes. “They say most half-bloods don’t survive for long after they’re born, and yet you did. You don’t know what would have been. You don’t know if she was right.” She wasn’t – he would have flown out of sheer will, she knows.

Her reassurance makes tension melt from his muscles. He leans into the touch of her hand, while his resumes its slow wandering at her back. For a bit, none of them speaks, and from the ghetto Carnival Row has become, more shooting sounds erupt in the early morning air. They are at war again, but at least they truly have each other now.

“Do you ever imagine it? What it would be like, with me?” Philo asks. Flying, he means.

“I do. In my dreams.” Oh, and she imagines more than that, too – dreams of two pair of wings wrapped around them instead of one, brushing tenderly as they move, before spreading wide and glowing; dreams of matching braids with symbols of love and devotion attached. He'd have to grow his hair again – maybe she could ask.

She realizes her answer might have hurt him, making him feel like something is lacking.

“But we don’t live in dreams, Philo. And we can’t live in the past, either. We are here, we are _now_.” She kisses him on the lips. “We are found.”

“We are found,” he echoes, chasing after her mouth. His kisses are always laced with a hint of desperation, with something aching and sad, and Vignette almost welcomes it. Gloom has always followed them, an invisible observer in the shadows.

Philo's hand drifts past the edge of the wing, drawing her closer from the back of her thigh, hooking it over his hip. He wants her again, so she shifts closer, letting him know she feels the same. She finds herself whimpering between one kiss and the next as he presses himself against her, rubbing oh-so-slowly, so tenderly, and it’s not enough.

Vignette pushes him to lie on his back and straddles him, grinning before diving in again. Philo buries his hands in her hair as they kiss, more frantic now, tongues insistent against each other. But this is not enough, either, so she reaches down to touch him, smiling against his lips when he groans and his head falls back on the pillow, baring his neck. Vignette kisses and bites at it, fumbling between them until he takes the hint and reaches down, too, to help her.

They gasp in unison once he’s inside her, their features scrunched up by the sudden spark of pleasure.

“Vignette,” Philo whispers, her little explorer on the surface of the moon, marveling at his discovery as if he hasn’t already landed, already walked, already touched. He has done all these things, and more: he has taken, he has given, he has broken, he has fixed. He has left, he has returned.

And in the end, he has stayed.

But his hands are always happy to reclaim the territory he has conquered, and so they touch wherever they can reach as their bodies find a rhythm, joined at the hips and in the soul. Their mouths go slack as they pant against each other’s lips, overwhelmed, staring into each other’s eyes to block out the sounds of death coming from outside. They are here and now, like she said; but for this, they are always somewhere else – in a library, and in a cave; in a home lost and fallen and crumbled to dust.

For this, they are a little lunar tribe of two: their own little kingdom on the moon.

Vignette sits up, hands on his chest, to chase the spark where it’s supposed to lead her, letting her body take over. She closes her eyes as Philo cups her breasts, traces her mouth, dips a finger in and then brings it down to brush around one of her nipples, making her gasp and clench and soar. Yes, soar.

“You are so beautiful,” he croaks below her, wrecked, always awestruck like a child as he takes in her fully spread and undulating wings, two blue-green waves flowing to the shore and retreating as she is. And that’s when it hits her: he is, too, and she can show him.

“Stay with me,” she tells him, reaching down to lead his hands to rest at her hips, squeezing his wrists until he understands and fully holds on to them.

“Always,” he says, but oblivious to her plans as Vignette sneaks her arms around his neck to get a good grip.

Her wings flutter at a faster pace, buzzing, so she can lift her hips from the bed and take him with her. Philo gasps in surprise, clutching at her hipbones – how has she never thought of this before, back then?

“Stay with me,” she repeats to reassure him, and this time, when he nods, he knows where this is going, where _they_ are. He locks his ankles around hers for his legs not to fall down, and then he’s off, too – off in the air, supported by her wings. He laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners; he _is_ beautiful, as is the tangle they make: _the joining of unlike things_, but whatever they’ll give life to won’t be monstrous – it will be pure, it is.

Vignette propels them with her wings until they’re no longer floating horizontally, but standing, her legs locked like a vice around his hips and his feet comically dangling into nothing, like a child sitting in a chair but unable to touch the floor. She knows Philo has no leverage from the ground to push into her, so she does the work for both of them. Her continuous flight keeps them in the air as she starts moving again, grinding into him, kissing him with her hands on his cheeks.

“Stay with me,” she urges one last time – _Fly with me_, she means now, and he is.

“I love you,” he whispers, encircling her with his arms at the small of her back. “Thank you.”

Vignette takes them higher still, heads almost bumping against the ceiling in her haste. They laugh, and do so again when she starts to slowly spin them in place, like one of those tiny, weirdly dressed dancers you can find inside human music boxes, twirling and twirling forever to somebody else’s tune.

But this tune is theirs to play, so when her wings ask for respite, Vignette brings them down again, with Philo kneeling under her on the bed. His hands find her wings immediately, eager to feel them, soothing the soreness with his palms as he smooths them all the way to their rounded tips.

She lets him take control, now, setting the pace with increasingly quick snaps of his hips, one arm around her again to keep her steady, to press deep inside her and make her cry out. Philo buries his face in the crook of her neck, mouthing at her skin, his strong legs flexing deliciously under her.

He moves her and guides her in his lap until she moans one last time, throwing her head back, glowing and tingling from her very core to each one of her extremities, human-like and not. His smile when she does is as surprised as the first time, mesmerized, so much that he even stops moving, heedless of his pleasure.

He doesn’t know he glows, too, when he comes, with a light that shines from within. He doesn’t know he is more fae than human, when it matters. In time, she’ll make him see that, too.

Spent, with her wings now flat against her back, Vignette takes him there, holding him close and rocking with him, ignoring the slight, sensitive tingle of pain inside. She takes him there and then enjoys her turn, watching him come undone in her arms – a vulnerable but powerful being, he is, and she is too, alone.

They are the joining of unlike things, and what they are together is stronger than the sum of their parts, stronger than they are separately.

With a bit of luck, it will be strong enough to face what the dawn will bring when the rest of the Burgue will wake. With a bit of effort, it will be strong enough for them to escape and find a place where they can just be.

Even if that place will turn out to be, indeed, a pale and distant moon.


End file.
